Josephs pulled a face. “Always do, sir. Always do.”
Ensign Kauders breathed out a sigh of relief. Men under his command had shot and killed someone, so his ass was on the line. There was a chance, a small chance, that since his men had been instrumental in stopping the dangerous criminal from escaping – he thought for a moment and decided that “vicious killer” was a more apt description – that he might survive this with his career intact. Having the video would be a plus.
At that point, one of the ambulance paramedics came running up to him. “You the guy who came in with that Jayhawk?” he asked breathlessly.
Kauders nodded.
The medic jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I got an elderly man here with three bullet wounds and what looks to me like a heart attack,” he explained. “Also, the fucking bastard you put down shot my partner. We need to load them in your helicopter and get ‘em to Bangor if they’re going to make it.”
“Are they stable enough for the flight?”
“Shit, they’re both dying!” the medic shouted. “I’ll go with them and keep them alive, but we’ve got to move!”
They moved. Two minutes later, Chief Warrant Officer Emily Waring pulled back on the collector and they lifted off, bound for the Eastern Maine Medical Center, forty-five miles away as the Jayhawk flies. She carried one emergency paramedic, shot through the lung, and one elderly sculptor, shot in the hip, shoulder and left hand, and suffering from a stress-induced heart attack.
She hummed contentedly to herself as she accelerated to 160 knots.
On the ground, Danielle and her mother stood side-by-side, hugging each other, watching as the helicopter disappeared into the night sky.
Frank Finley arrived ten minutes later. Danielle fell into his arms and for a long minute they just held on and cried. Finally, she pulled back, wiping her tears with the back of her hands, then finding a handkerchief to blow her nose.
“It worked, Frank, everything you planned,” she told him, half grinning, half sobbing. “It saved our lives.”
He pulled her close again, hugging her as if afraid to let her go, which was exactly the case.
“You’d be proud of Calvin,” she whispered in his ear. “When I told him it wasn’t safe to call the police, he called the fire department and told them to send an engine and an ambulance. It was when the killer heard the sirens that he finally gave it up and ran.”
Then, abruptly, she pulled away again. “But who called the helicopter? And who are they?” she demanded, pointing to Ensign Kauders and his two men.
Finley grinned. “The Coast Guard. Howard called them and they sent the cavalry.”
Danielle sighed. “Okay…okay. Listen, I’ve got to take Mom to the Medical Center in Bangor to see about Dad. Will you stay here with Calvin and Gabrielle?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said distractedly, his mind overloading with all that had happened.
“And Frank,” she said softly. “Remind me to tell you about Calvin and Gabrielle, but in the meantime, you be real nice to her.”
She kissed him softly on the mouth and then left to find her mother. Another crisis to face.
Finley stared after her. Tell him what about Gabrielle and Calvin?
______________
The first police car from the North Harbor police arrived fifteen minutes after that. Officer Burrows, one of Chief Corcoran’s bully boys, stepped out and carefully put on his hat and hitched up his pants. He spotted Finley and walked over to him, hands on his hips, then made a parody of looking around at the ambulance and the fire engine, their lights still flashing.
“Finley, you mind tellin’ me what the fuck you are up to?” he scowled.
______________
The police sealed off the house with crime tape, so Finley and Calvin trudged over to the grandparents’ house. It was after midnight before Finley got to bed. Calvin had taken Gabrielle home and Finley heard him return a few minutes later.
Calvin stopped at his father’s bedroom door.
“Your mom said you were great tonight. Calling the fire department was pretty clever,” Finley said, studying his son closely. “You okay?”
Calvin took a deep breath and blew it out forcibly. “I guess. I’m not really sure. It doesn’t seem real. I mean, Mom was incredible, but when the shooting started I-” He paused. “It just didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t.”
Worried that his son was suffering slightly from shock, Finley swung out of bed and found a robe. But then another thought struck him. “Calvin, do you know where Jacob is?”
Calvin blinked for a moment. “Oh, geez, Dad, I forgot. Jacob called just before the men broke into the house. He said he was going to sleep over at a friend’s tonight and go to work from there in the morning.” Calvin looked embarrassed. “He’ll call me on his way to work; he always does.”
Finley looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was already 12:30 a.m. He would talk to Jacob in the morning. He turned his attention back to his younger son, who looked pale and wane in the hallway light. “Calvin, how about you and me have some hot cocoa with a shot of your Grandfather’s best whiskey in it? I think we could both use it.”
When Finley woke the next morning, Jacob had already left a message that he’d gone into work early and would call them when he got back to the dock that afternoon. Finley tried to reach him, but the call rolled over to Jacob’s answering machine.
No matter, he’d talk to his son later in the day.
Sometimes it is the littlest things that make all the difference.
Chapter 44
Wednesday Night
At the docks, Paul Dumas sat in his office and watched as the Celeste, Samantha and Rosie’s Pride steamed past the seawall and into the harbor, using spotlights to help them navigate the passage. The boats showed signs of the storm, with some torn lines and loose equipment sloshing around the deck. One cabin window was sporting a crack Dumas hadn’t seen before. His office wall clock said 6:45 p.m., much too late for boats returning from an ordinary day’s lobstering.
He watched as the crews tied up the boats and stumbled tiredly down the dock through the rain and the wind. There was one man he didn’t recognize, not one of the locals who had sailed with LeBlanc for years. A hard-looking man who triggered a very instinctual fight-or-flight response in him. He watched them all as they made their way to the parking lot, then he picked up the phone and called his brother-in-law.
But there was no answer.
Paul Dumas sighed and looked at his watch. He needed to be home for something important soon. Someone important. He shook his head and decided he could tell Frank in the morning.
______________
Banderas got the phone call telling him about the disastrous attempted hits on Finley and his family. He in turn called LeBlanc.
“Jesus Christ! How’d that happen?” LeBlanc roared over the phone.
“Doesn’t matter,” Banderas said. “What’s important is that the men I sent are all dead, so they can’t tell the cops nothin’. But it also means that Finley and the DEA are going to be mad as shit, so we got to find the parcels tomorrow and get them delivered.”
LeBlanc considered this for a moment, weighing the risks, but he knew he was already committed. The options were to pull it off under the nose of the cops, or risk jail. He sighed, wondering again how he had ever gotten into this mess.
“Okay,” he said neutrally. “Okay.”
“But we might want some extra insurance, you know?” Banderas continued. “We might want a little bargaining power, just in case.”
LeBlanc frowned. “Like what?”
“The Finley kid,” Banderas said patiently. “I want you to bring the Finley kid tomorrow, just in case we need him.”
“For Christ’s sake,” LeBlanc said angrily. “If we bring him on board he’ll see what we’re doing. Hell, if we find a package, he’ll know exactly what we’re doing. If we manage to sneak the goods off to your people when we return, what’s to
keep him from going straight to his old man and spilling his guts?”
There was silence on the line for several long moments.
“Hey,” Banderas said coldly. “I said I want him with us in case we need him. I never said he had to make it back.”
“So when we make the delivery, we kill him,” LeBlanc said coldly.
“You got a problem?” Banderas came back. “Maybe you think it’s better if we let him go home and tell his fucking father all about this? Become the star witness at our trial?”
“No,” LeBlanc said heavily. “No problem.” He took a breath. There was no way out of this. And truth be told, he didn’t really care anymore. “I’ll call him and tell him to be at the docks by 5 a.m.”
“You’re a good man, Jean-Philippe,” Banderas said sardonically. “I knew I could count on you.”
Chapter 45
Thursday Morning – Final Search
The Celeste slipped its mooring forty minutes before dawn, followed minutes later by her two sister ships. It was the same crew as the day before, but with one addition: Jacob Finley. He had shown up right on time. Once he was on the ship, LeBlanc and Banderas took him to the small storage cabin at the stern of the ship and, before he realized what was happening, gagged him and tied his hands and feet with zip cords.
“Jake, you keep quiet here and don’t make a fuss and everything will be okay,” LeBlanc assured him. “This is just what we got to do for today.” Then he left him and shut the door.
The three boats went out, sailing in an arrowhead formation towards the spot they left off at the day before. They passed Sheldrake Ledge and then Eastern Mark Island, then steered slightly north northeast to pass Shabby Island and give them a clear run for the western shoreline of Swans Island, which they would scour from north to south, then circle it pinging all the way. Swans Island and Isle Au Haut stood like two squat sentries, blocking the path of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current as it moved from northeast to southwest. If one of the drug parcels got that far, it would have to go east or west around them, or even better, ground on one of them. That was the hope at least.
Banderas had been quiet most of the ride, clutching his coffee mug to ward off the morning chill. The loss of his hit team had shaken him badly. He wasn’t sure what had bothered him more, the fact that Finley had led one team into an ambush, or that the other team had been bested by a woman, a boy and a girl.
He put down his mug and asked LeBlanc, “Do you want me to fire up the transponder?”
LeBlanc was also in a foul mood. Yesterday’s storm had seriously curtailed their search, and with the attempted assassination of Finley, the DEA was sure to be in a frenzy. “No,” LeBlanc answered sarcastically. “We’re just out here for a bit of fresh air. Of course I want you to fire up the transponder!” Banderas’ face darkened and LeBlanc was once more reminded that this man was a killer, after all. He picked up his radio mic and called the other ships. “Start mapping now,” he ordered.
When they pulled within a thousand meters of Shabby Island, the receiver unit suddenly registered a loud, crisp “PING!” It was so unexpected that no one said anything at first, then Banderas thumped his fist hard against the hull. Right on time the transponder sent out a second ping and the drug parcel’s unit activated and sent out it’s ping in reply.
“Where is it?” LeBlanc shouted, still not quite believing that they had located one of the parcels.
“Hold on, I’ve got a bearing,” Banderas said, his earlier mood gone. “Madre de Dios! It’s almost right in front of us!” He looked up, something approaching joy on his face. “Keep going for ten minutes and we’ll get a cross-bearing.”
And ten minutes later, they did. “It’s right at that little island,” Banderas said, pointing not half a mile away. “Has to be.”
LeBlanc had sailed these waters since he was five years old. “That’s Shabby Island. It’s surrounded by a gentle ledge that stays pretty shallow for more than a hundred feet out. Storm could have driven one of the parcels right up onto it. Hell, it could be sitting on dry land by now.”
He dispatched the Samantha and Rosie’s Pride to search the rest of the island’s coastline, and from there to head for Swans Island. Then he took the Celeste in closer to the west side of Shabby Island and pulled out a pair of binoculars.
“Anything?” Banderas asked impatiently.
LeBlanc ignored him, quartering the part of the island he could see with the binoculars and meticulously sweeping over the ground. The pinging from the receiver was getting louder and louder as the waves pushed them closer to shore. He was just beginning to think that it must have hung up under water somewhere…and there it was. Sitting high and mostly dry in a shallow tidal pool. Fifty pounds of some of the best heroin in the world, and perhaps some fentanyl as well. Worth somewhere around $10 to $13 Million.
“There it is,” he said calmly. “Parcel Number One.”
It took another fifteen minutes of maneuvering and some ballet moves with the throttle and rudder, but LeBlanc finally got the bow of the Celeste in about five feet of water. He left one of his brothers at the wheel to keep the boat from drifting onto the rocky ledge – the heroin might be worth $10 Million, but there was no way in hell he was going to scrape the bottom of his boat for it – while he and Banderas jumped overboard and waded into the tidal pool.
The package was about eighteen inches high and deep, and almost thirty inches wide. It was sealed in some heavy canvas sheeting that had been carefully stitched, then painted with waterproofing. Attached to the parcel by thick canvas straps was some sort of electrical unit, stored in a plexiglass container that also housed a lithium battery. This was the transponder, LeBlanc realized. This sent out a “ping” when triggered by the acoustic searcher on board the Celeste. Staring at the box, which looked for all the world like a delivery box from Amazon, LeBlanc wondered briefly how many people had already died because of the shipment of this one, single box.
He blew out a deep breath. “Give me a hand,” he told Banderas.
Banderas snorted contemptuously, then bent over and picked up the fifty-pound box as if it were a box of Christmas chocolates and hoisted it to his shoulder. Together, they waded out to the Celeste and lifted the parcel on board, then hoisted themselves over the bow railing. Wordlessly, Banderas carried the parcel into the small pilot’s cockpit and placed it on the map table, where he took out a flip knife and cut open the outer canvas layer. Inside was a layer of thick, clear plastic, which had been tightly wrapped around yet another layer, then sealed shut with a generous amount of duct tape.
Banderas cut through the plastic layer and peeled it back, exposing a layer of blue-tinted plastic that had also been duct-taped. He cut through that and ripped it away. He glanced over his shoulder then and saw three of the crew standing in the doorway, peering over his shoulder.
“Back to work!” he snarled, and hefted his pistol in one hand in emphasis. The men retreated hastily and he put the gun down and retrieved the knife. Beneath the blue layer were twenty-four brick-shaped bundles, all but one individually wrapped in two more layers of blue plastic, then carefully sealed with duct tape. The twenty-fourth was wrapped in pink-colored plastic and duct tape. Banderas knew that brick was the fentanyl. Carefully, he ran his hands over each brick, feeling for any break in the plastic water-proofing, then sank back in relief.
They were intact and dry. Unspoiled.
And worth a fortune.
LeBlanc radioed the other boats, who were almost finished with their circuit around Swan Island. Rather than go together, they had split up and circled the island in different directions at high speed, which LeBlanc grudgingly admitted he hadn’t thought of. He ordered one boat to circle Long Island to the east and sent the other to Marshall Island to the southwest. “Pay particular attention to Popplestone Cove,” he told the captain of the Rosie’s Pride. “It hooks out into the water and usually catches a lot of crap floating in the Coastal Current as it sweeps in from the northeast
.
Banderas, meanwhile, had locked the drugs in a utility locker just off the pilot’s cockpit and was wiping his hands on his shirt. “Where next, Captain?” he asked.
Nothing like finding one of the parcels to put even him in a good mood.
LeBlanc unrolled the map and put it back on the map table. “We’re here,” he said, pointing a thick finger at Shabby Island. He moved his finger to the east. “The other boats covered Swans Island and now they’re checking Marshall Island and Long Island, here and here.” His finger moved over the map. “I propose that we move southwest into this cluster of islands immediately off of North Harbor and Stonington, then regroup after lunch to search the perimeter of Isle Au Haut using all three boats.”
Banderas studied the map for several minutes, then nodded. “Let’s do it.” He stood up and stretched. In the east the sun was a little above the horizon, casting long shadows. The fact that they had found one of the parcels immediately gave him hope, but he knew that the other two could be anywhere among these islands, or nowhere. Part of him recognized there was a good chance one or both of the other parcels had simply drifted through the islands and back out to sea.
Nothing he could do about it, except search.
______________
Thursday morning, Paul Dumas’ car wouldn’t start. He fretted over it for an hour, but couldn’t make it work. He borrowed a bicycle from the kid next door and pedaled ten miles, awkwardly, to the harbor, where he rubbed his sore backside and finally settled in behind his desk at 11 a.m. In the midst of catching up on his emails, he sat bolt upright. He hadn’t called his brother-in-law. Muttering in French and English, he dialed up Frank’s number.
No answer. He tried Frank’s cell number and was rewarded with a tired, grumpy, “Hello?”
“You sound like shit,” Paul Dumas said cheerfully.
On the other end of the line, Finley stared at the phone. He and Danielle had been unable to reach her brother last night. From the sounds of it, Paul still did not know about the gunfight or that his father was in the hospital, fighting for his life. He sighed. “Long night,” he replied, but didn’t explain.
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